Happy Holidays!

This week we wrapped up the SRC activities. Most of the drive trains were completed but the rookies did not get to go much further than that.  We basically ran out of time and had to prepare for Kickoff.

We fleshed out a high level plan on TeamworkPM and reviewed it with the other mentors and team. We've also decided to try out the  WhenToHelp scheduling tool. Hopefully using this tool will help us manage the team work more efficiently. From some of the interest poll results, many people are interested in the multiple areas equally. I would rather they pick one to focus on but as of now, they don't have enough experience yet to know if they don't like something or not.

On a daily basis, we will open the build session with a short meeting where we review what happened the prior day and what our next steps are so that everyone knows what they are working on. At the end of the session, we will hold a wrapup meeting where a member from each sub team reports on their accomplishments and issues and what the next steps are. They will put this information in the build season log. Anyone who needs to catch up can read the log. As a team we haven't been very good keeping a log up to date but it is essential for this year.

We also need to better manage the cleanup process at the end of each day.  People who sign up for a shift need to stay for the entire shift. Pre-sorting the bins of stuff to return to inventory will also help speed it up. We estimate that it will take 30-45 minutes. Hopefully, as we get better at it and people learn where stuff belongs, it will go faster. 45 minutes lost every day does add up.

Last night, the official game hint was announced. I am not usually a big game hint chaser because most off the time they don't really make sense or give much advantage. This one was ominous.  "Change is coming." Bring it on!

Of course, last minute shopping for prototyping materials have to be done and we need to make arrangements for food on kickoff weekend.

Happy Holidays!  Rest up while we can before the fun begins!

It's already how many days until kickoff???

18 days to go on our Kickstarter and we are pretty much at a standstill at around $2600.  :(  boo....

Moving on...

We hopped off the wait list for Chesapeake and have registered for a third regional - Windsor Essex Great Lakes - in Ontario, Canada.  Woo Hoo! We get to go on a long bus ride and eat at Tim Hortons again! (Hopefully, they will stay intact even after Burger King purchased them.)  Of course, there are pre-requisites for the trip.  We have to bag and tag the robot by February 13th so that the team will be able to get rest during Winter break.  Also the price quoted is for 30 students.  If there are not enough committed to go, the trip is canceled.  It doesn't make sense cost-wise.

For the New York and SBPLI regionals, we are also planning to stay overnight in a hotel closer to the venue.  This is so that we can spend time scouting and not commuting.  This is the first time we're trying this based on tips from Karthik K. and other teams.

In the SRC training, the rookies have finally drawn up their robot designs and started building the drivetrains with VEX components.  They are struggling with it partly because the directions give them a slightly larger frame than required by the rules.  They seem to be having fun though :)

We submitted a priority list in FIRST Choice and got 10 of the top 13 items we asked for. However we didn't get batteries or solenoids.  I can't believe teams actually went for the old control system parts and classmates.  There was an error in the inventory for the pneumatics fitting kit and it got substituted with one with brass fittings.  The package got shipped yesterday and we should get it on Tuesday!

We now have our first blog entry published!!! The website has an About Us page and the social media links work!

A few members went with Mr. Heitman to visit the workshop with the plasma cutter in Brooklyn after school on Thursday.  There we found out based on Uncle Victor's experience that plasma cutters do not work well with aluminum (less precision) but it needs to be tested.  Steel cuts better but it is also 2.5x heavier. He also had a metal bender, a Tig (?), welding equipment and other tools I will not attempt to name.  Victor promised to come by school to take a look at our older robots and see if any improvements can be made using the tools in his workshop.  It will then give us a better idea of what kind of things we can do for this coming season.

FON (Festival Of Nations) is starting already?  Seems earlier than last year but people were already practicing the Filipino Stick Dance in the lobby.  FON is wonderful but it's a big drain on Robotics resources.  The SciOly teams had their first invitational today as well so they were busy getting their mechanisms ready.

Today, StuyPulse hosted their StuySplash Workshop.  I was happy and disappointed that one person from THHS showed up.  Disappointed because there was only one.  Happy because nobody had responded to my email so I wasn't expecting anyone.  I was looking forward to the keynote speaker since the talk from the CMU professor last year was pretty good.  Unfortunately, it was a little difficult to understand the professor from City College.  Some of the robotics projects he talked about were interesting however - quadcopters which can map a place using lasers, robots that use vacuum to climb walls and ceilings and work to help the blind.  There was also a robot built by seniors (mechanical, programming, electrical) which won a competition.  Some of the other sessions were also enlightening - Learning From Mistakes and Marketing/Public Relations.  The mistakes that Stuy encountered were also ones that we've made - like building a shooter without using encoders, programming autonomous without using encoders, and not properly checking the health of our batteries.  It's really scary now that I think about all those times we were lucky our battery didn't die in the middle of a match.  No wonder we see teams at competition with a big battery cart and multiple chargers! The Beta presentation was good - pretty detailed with demos.  They had retrofitted the control system on an old robot.  I am curious when people will be testing the cameras and other sensors.  They seem to be on the list of remaining things to test.  We also finally returned the planetary gearbox that we borrowed from Stuy.

We have started planning for the build season.  Some of the challenges include the ability to manage the large group of incoming rookies and the shorter build schedule (no Fridays for the first few weeks and target finish by Feb 13).  We are evaluating WhenToHelp.com to define shifts and have the team members sign up for shifts.  Also, we're using TeamworkPM to try to set up a high level project plan.  I want to have an Agile type meeting in the beginning of each session and have an update and next steps from each sub-team before we leave.  Each sub-team should write their updates and observations in a log.  People would also be using the Points Tracker to add points for their build hours. We have a meeting coming up to get the other mentors up to speed.

Inventory is in better shape although the quality of the data depends on who is entering it.  We have been adding items to a list for restocking like pool noodles, pneumatic fittings, duct tape, etc.

OMG - I completely forgot about the roboRIO!  We received the one we pre-ordered from AndyMark last Friday.  Unfortunately, the other parts did not come with it and the firmware has not yet been published.  It's getting lonely sitting in the box...

OK. Enough blabbing for now.  Time to review and simplify my project plan.

Our FRC Workshop

On Sunday, our team hosted an FRC workshop at Townsend Harris High School. We had 3 presentations prepared on safety, drive train and programming.

We had scheduled a practice run for all the presentations last Thursday but none of them were close to being done.  I was quite worried.

When we arrived at school (running a little late because we had to pick up coffee from Dunkin' Donuts), there was quite a turn out.  There were attendees from Francis Lewis, John Bowne, Cardozo and Thomas Edison High Schools.  The person from FIRST who organized the workshops was there as well.

All in all - the presentations went well.  There was some nervousness because they didn't practice enough.  Some parts could have been improved if given more time and feedback.
We ended up finishing early because we skipped lunch.  People ate a lot of bagels and danishes.

After that, we continued with inventory for a bit longer.  People are starting to get the hang of what to do.  Although problems with getting access to the internet - using the DOE vs school wifi - to look up information was a hindrance.

Tuesday's meeting was not very productive.  Since most of the veterans were participating in the Science Olympiad in-house testing, only the president was entertaining the rookies.  They covered some CAD and then sang a robot song that Mr R made up that morning.  I got a sneak preview of the Safety Animation and it looks pretty good so far.  It shows quite a lot of progress made since last year.  The next step after this is submitted is to train the rookies to take over when these seniors have graduated.

We got our peek at FIRST Choice and started looking at items to submit for our Priority List.  The Priority List processing is new.  The folks at AndyMark are offering this as an alternative to the first come first serve shopping when FIRST Choice opens.  This year we have 600 credits to spend.  There seem to be fewer pneumatics parts available - no compressors.  There are a lot of steel tracks however which made people wonder if that is a game hint.

There are about 3 weeks left until Christmas break.  Time to start planning and getting ready for Kickoff and Build Season!

btw - the Kickstarter project is still open - only $2600 pledged and about $5400 to go.  Please donate whatever amount you can - every $1 helps us get closer to the goal.  We don't get any of the money until we reach the goal.

TEDYouth 2014 and updates

On Saturday, I chaperoned a few of the team members to TEDYouth 2014 in the beautiful Brooklyn Museum.  It was our first time at such an event.  The auditorium was full of middle and high school kids as they listened to many speakers who were experts on a wide variety of topics including geology, astronomy, leeches, music robotics, and bio-engineering.  In the Beau-Arts Court next to the auditorium, they had tables with activities/displays manned by either the speakers themselves or TED personnel.  You can tell TED is well sponsored - they provided free lunch, snacks and t-shirts to participants.  From what I could see, the kids had a great time.  My only peeve is that the chaperones who couldn't fit in the back mezzanine of the auditorium had to watch the live stream on TV in the Beau-Arts Court.  The team should try to go again next year.

In other areas, adoption of Points Tracker is going well.  There were some issues encountered in the first couple of days - mostly user error from lack of training or rather users didn't pay attention to directions until they tried to enter in their points.  Even then, they didn't read the directions written on the first tab or look at the training video.  I had to manually correct some entries until finally, I added a function to allow them to delete their entry and re-enter it again.  People seem very trigger happy to click the Save button before they finish filling in the fields.  I added a screen shot with instructions and arrows which seems to help a bit.

Inventory is in full swing.  We, of course, had to add an extra incentive for people to stay and do inventory since it is very detailed and tedious work.  Again, lack of training was an issue and I had to manually adjust things that were done incorrectly - some kids created spreadsheets on their own instead of using the scripts so the data was not linked up.  The information they entered also was of varying quality.  The Inventory Secretary was busy learning to manage this project - helping people look up items, assigning bins, training, etc.

I am happy to report that one of the kids volunteered to work on the website and is actually making progress.   I also asked for volunteers to write the team blog and a few people were interested if they can rotate the responsibility.

The team is also preparing for the FRC Workshops that we are hosting on Sunday.  We are a little less prepared than we were for last year's Beta Test presentation.  From what I saw yesterday, it needed some more work and practice.  We have 3 presentations:

• Make it Go: The Programming Very Basics
• SAFETY!!!
• Improving on the Kitbot or the Basic Drivetrain

Yesterday was the last of our series of bake sales and it was a big one.  Since it was dress rehearsal for the school's SING performances and there was a basketball game, we had a lot of customers. Never mind that a parent brought in sliders from White Castle - over 200 of them!  The security guard was so happy - she had been craving WC burgers :)

We also had 2 members from Francis Lewis H.S.'s FRC team come join us.  Somehow they only had a couple of kids who wanted to continue FRC this year.  Most of the other students participate in the FTC program and the rest of the team from last year have graduated.  We're trying to help them keep their FRC program alive - or at least provide a place for those kids to participate.

We have 40 days left in our Kickstarter project and currently have 24 backers pledging a total of $2050.  Still trying to spread the word because we don't get any of the funds until we reach the goal.

Finally, I got a wonderful surprise yesterday.  While busy taping the Inventory QR codes to bins in the bathroom a.k.a. our "storage" area, I was summoned back to the classroom.  When I walked in, I got a "Happy Birthday" and was presented with my "Woodie flowers", a small binder filled with touching notes from the kids and a cool robot silicone mold.  Now I can make them chocolate or Jello robots and No - No Jello shots!

Brunswick Eruption 13 - our first off-season event

On Saturday, the team went to our first Off-Season event, Brunswick Eruption 13, hosted by Team 25 - Raider Robotix.  We've been preparing for this event for the past two weeks.  Since many of the rookies expressed interest in attending,  we had to get them ready as well as ourselves.  This included a new set of scouting forms to replace the Android app that we used for competition.  According to the agenda, qualification matches took place in the morning with Alliance selection immediately following the last match.  That means we did not have time to reenter the scouting data into a spreadsheet to generate the pick list.  The scouting leads spent one training session teaching the rookies how to record match data.  I did some pre-scouting and found that about 10 teams had gone to Worlds this year and one of them had made it to the finals.  Looks like it will be an uphill battle.

Tomahawk had to be checked and tuned up.  We discovered many loose or missing nuts and bolts. The catapult was not at the right angle.  Bumpers had to be repaired.   Also, since we offered to lend our practice robot, Beta, to the rookie team 5599 (The Sentinels) from Cardozo, we had to tune it as well.

We also needed to define our drive teams.  As a rule refresher, I prepared an abbreviated version of the driver and game rules test for those who applied for the drive team.  Rookies applied for the role of the Human Player.  We had set up a small test course for the drivers, operators and human players.
Factoring in the test course timings and test scores, Marcus and Ian tied for the highest driver score.
Unfortunately, we didn't have time to do any additional practice before Saturday.

Packing tools and spare parts was done on Friday and everything was loaded into one of the school vans. The second van would also be put to use.

As Mr. Heitman said, this week was a tough one: Open House on Monday, Parent Teacher Conferences on Wednesday and Friday, and Founder's Day on Thursday.
On Saturday morning around 5:30 am, the van with the robots and gear and drive team and safety members set off first for North Brunswick.  About an hour later, the second van with the remaining students along with vehicles of other parents and mentors headed out.

Because we had a couple of kids taking the SAT IIs that morning, I watched the matches on the live stream that was provided.  You can tell that many teams had new drivers like ours.  Some of the driving was not as efficient, some simple mistakes made - like forgotten rules or not really understanding the game or forgetting to load the ball in the robot for autonomous.  But that was to be expected, after all, you vet out drivers in off-season events.  Teams also test out new components.  One team had switched their drive train to a new one they worked on since competition.  Sure we could have tested our summer project if only we thought of it sooner.

We arrived after the alliance selection to witness the Evil Sundae Contest - luckily our first candidate pulled out before he had to eat bacon (because he can't) and our brave substitute survived sauerkraut, mayonnaise and other goodies.

So at the end of qualifications, we ranked 12th. I was happy to find that the scouts were able to produce a pick list.  I'll need to get a copy of it and review the scouting data.  However, we ended up not having to use it as we were picked as the 4th robot for Alliance #6.  For Aerial Assist, that meant we were backup if one of the other 3 broke down.

Apparently the alliance captain did have problems and we got to play in the second match. Woohoo!
Ultimate, our alliance lost in the third match and did not advance to the finals.

Then it was time for awards.  The rookie award went to Team 5599 (aka 2602 - because we shared bumpers modified with tape with them), but they were outside in the parking lot!!!  Mr Heitman went to get them and then the Mahalo award was given to us for GP (Gracious Professionalism) - i.e. helping the rookies participate. The award trophy was a tikki.  Yes - they had a Hawaiian theme.

We departed, got stuck in traffic and eventually made it back to school between 7:15 and 7:45 pm.  By the time we unloaded everything back into the bathroom and put the seats back in the van it was around 8:30.

Lessons learned:
- people need to eat - even if they are picky about the food and especially if they are on the drive team otherwise they end up eating Kit Kats and Pringles or have stomach cramps.  Ever heard of : Beggars can't be choosy?
- people can step up to fill the gaps - we had new people in most of the roles.  The team's presentation for the Hoku (mini-Chairman's) award got positive feedback.
- we need lots more practice driving
- drive team needs to know the rules
- scouting matches is boring but it is very important
- we need to use our packing list when packing or keep forgetting things
- check the agenda and plan accordingly - No, alliance selection isn't after lunch break
- there's no hope for dancing or spirit awards on our team :(
- off-season events are great!

Fundraising!

Since FIRST Robotics is a relatively expensive program, every team needs to do a lot of fundraising. It takes $5K to register for a single regional competition.  This doesn't include monies to buy parts and materials to build the robot ($4K) nor travel expenses (TBD) to get the team to that competition.  If the team decides to register for additional competitions, it costs $4K more for each one.  The team can spend up to $4K in labor and parts to build a competition robot.  Of course, there's more if spare parts have to be kept in stock and if we build an extra robot to practice with after the freeze date (Bag and Tag Day).

There are many ways to raise funds: applying for grants, bake sales, car washes, pasta dinners, selling candy/candles/popcorn/raffles, going to local businesses for donations, etc.  We've been continuously applying for grants.  Every Thursday, we hold a bake sale after school.  The kids have been reaching out to the businesses in the area.  While we appreciate every dollar that comes our way, we still have a long way to go.  This year we are planning to attend 2 (maybe 3) regional competitions!

The Steel Hawks is now trying out a Kickstarter project.  A parent of some team members set this up.  We're hoping this money will help offset some of the costs described above.

As an added incentive, our head coach has volunteered to be the recipient of a bucket of ice for every $100 raised. (I think he'll be in over his head with ice so he'd better not get sick before Kickoff on January 3rd!  Don't worry - we will be recording this event!)  See his challenge below:

Please Help Spread the Word. Please pass this along, you will be helping an amazing group of students.

Anyone who believes that there is more to an education than Common Core and Standardized Testing, will truly believe in the learning experience FIRST Robotics is giving to our children.

To help my students reach their goal, I will personally do a modified ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE where for every 100.00 raised I will have my students dump ice buckets on me!! That's 80 ice buckets! If they reach their goal by November 30th, 2014, I will make it an even 100 ICE BUCKETS!!!!

The countdown begins now. You know what to do: tell people about it! Let's reach our goal!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1686974648/steel-hawks-first-robotics-team-2601

If you can spare some $, please donate to the team. In any case, please forward this info to others who may be interested.  This project is open until the end of the year.

If you would like to help the team in other ways like:

• mentoring - both technical and non-technical
• food - because kids are always hungry
• running errands to Home Depot, etc. - because we sometimes can't wait for parts to be shipped
• donating services or materials

please contact me or the team at townsendharrisrobotics@gmail.com.

Thank you for your support!

Meeting the parents and updates

On Tuesday, the coaches and some mentors met with the parents of students interested in transitioning from the club to the team.  We had over 15 families in attendance.  We bought pizza and soda for dinner. The head coach prepared some slides about FIRST, what our typical Build Schedule is and what kind of support we need from parents. We distributed copies of our team's Handbook which we worked on since the spring.  There were only a few parents who asked questions.  A few offered their help with food, rides and such.  Overall, I think the meeting went well.  The goal of the is for the parents to get a better understanding of what their child is signing up for.

The students also had a separate meeting at the same time. There, the criteria for becoming a team member were explained - the Points System.  I'm waiting to see how the Points Tracker stands up to more use and volume.

So far, our new training program, dubbed the "SECOND Robotics Competition" (SRC), has been working well.  Our current attendance by new members still average about 30 per session. Attendance has actually increased gradually.  The kids seem excited and enthusiastic.  We have also informed them about the off-season competition that the team is attending - Brunswick Eruption - in just over a week.  Over 20 said that they wanted to go!  I'm looking forward to the Evil Sundae Contest! With the large influx of new members, we really have to plan the Build season in more detail and delegate more to the other mentors and veterans.

Inventory has started - still registering and labeling the bins and bookshelves at this point.  We found a few minor areas in the tool which need to be fixed.  I'm also waiting to see how the Inventory tool handles more users and data.

There are a lot of activities going on at school.  This week was Spirit Week.  Students and faculty dressed up for Twin Day, Pajama Day, Halloween, etc.  Seniors were wrapping up their work for the Election Simulations.  Others are getting ready for Founder's Day performances next week.  Many Early Action applications are due tomorrow for the seniors and teachers.

We've been getting many opportunities for expanding our community outreach work.  It is difficult to choose or do all of them when we don't have enough members who are able to meet the additional  required time commitments (in addition to time spent on robotics and other clubs, they also have to work 40 hours of community service for school). After watching Karthik's session on the Chairman's Award on Wednesday, I think that we need to be smarter and more unique in how we approach community outreach and this award. Our team isn't big enough to be able to support a large number of outreach activities.

There are lots of things to do next week: the team is scheduled to give a demonstration at a school in Manhattan, we have to finish preparations for Brunswick Eruption (packing, drive team practice, travel logistics, etc.), prepare for the FRC workshops that we are hosting in November, continue Inventory and training, etc.

TTFN!

Inventory Control

Inventory control is a problem.  Our team stores most of our stuff - that includes robots, parts, tools, raw materials, etc. - in our storage room.  The storage room is actually a boys' bathroom on the sixth floor of the school that one of our coaches had commandeered. This year, when we work on our robot, we don't have a dedicated space.  Everything that comes out of the bathroom must go back at the end of the day.

Although we do have shelves and bins (some of which are actually labeled), we don't actually have a good handle on what parts we have or need until we run out.  When that happens, we desperately "Google" until we find a similar part and order it with expedited shipping.  That expedited shipping is expensive and does add up.  Last year, we spent about $1K on shipping.  Waiting for the parts to come also puts a delay in our build time.

So this year, we are attempting to implement a system to track inventory.  Last year, we tried but started in the middle of Build season and it didn't have resources or tools required to complete it. This time, we have a team member in charge and he designed a new system.  It is not meant to become an overhead.  The tool was built over the summer and now we hope to use it.

The tool - now named Inventory Control System (ICS) - is a set of Google spreadsheets used with QR codes.
The requirements:
- be available to all members at any time whether you are in the lab, the bathroom or home
- have enough information to be useful - picture of the part, where to order from, quantity, price, weight
- integration with the Bill of Materials - or be able to generate one - and have the tool automatically remove those items from inventory

Since you can encode a URL within a QR code, we are using the QR code to launch a Google spreadsheet.  Each bin will have a QR code with a corresponding spreadsheet which will hold the information for the contents of that bin.  There seems to be a limitation in the Google Sheets app where even if you provide the gid# for a specific sheet, it will only open to the first sheet.  Originally, I was going to have a sheet for each bin but because of this limitation, we now have a spreadsheet for each bin.  Separate spreadsheets may lessen contention on a single spreadsheet.

Building a consolidated list of all the items consisted of importing the data from each bin's spreadsheet into a Master spreadsheet.  From there you can have a variety of pivot tables and filters to narrow down the view.  One of the reports shows which items to reorder.

Maintenance of all these sheets (such as adding a bin, adding a location, adding a category) is done via a series of scripts launched by button clicks.

The Bill of Materials is set in a separate spreadsheet.  Here the user interface is similar - fill in some fields and click the button to launch a script which will add the item to the BOM and subtract it from inventory.

Another limitation of Google Sheets is that the images are not displayed.  You can see them in the browser on a PC but not on a tablet or phone.  Therefore, you cannot see the buttons either - so most of the administration will have to be done on a PC.  It also would have been helpful for team members to see what the parts look like when they are searching for a part.

At this point, we are about to train the team members how to use it. The tools have gone through light testing so I'm waiting to hear about bugs as well.   I'll post updates on adoption progress later.

Points System

How does your team admit new members?  What privileges do team members have?

There have been multitudes of polls and posts on Chief Delphi on this topic.  For the Steel Hawks, it's been an evolution and continues to be.  New people first join the Robotics Club and then decide if they want to commit to the team.

When I first started on the team, there was no system or known criteria for recognizing which students qualified to be on the team.  I think it was up to the teachers and whether they remembered if somebody showed up at meetings or not.  It was error prone - sometimes people's names were on the team shirt even when they did not contribute to the team.  Last year, the Executive Board (EB) tried to define some fair way to distinguish team vs. club members by counting the number of hours that students came during the build season. The cutoff was at 120 hours. That number was realistic for many members but it scared off the less dedicated/passionate people.  We also defined some of the team member benefits such as name on the t-shirt, eligibility for travelling to away competitions and FIRST scholarships, etc.  Keeping track of these hours was another chore that students ended up loathing.  They had to keep a notebook journal to record what they did and get their entry approved before going home.  It was a step in the right direction but wasn't perfect.  There wasn't an easy way to see the data in aggregate form or run a report on a stack of notebooks.

This summer, after surveying what many other teams do, the EB proposed a points system.  It does address many of the issues we found in the other methodology.  The points system gives credit for non-technical aspects of a robotics team such as fundraising, working on award submissions, outreach, and attending competitions.  After all, we do want to emphasize that building a robot is not the only thing we do on the team.

Below is a table listing ways to earn points:

Activity	Point Value
1 hour of Build	one point per hour
Assisting in cleanup	1
Attending Kick Off	5
Attending Off-Season Competition	5
Attending a Regional Competition	10
Attending a Fundraising event (i.e. bake sale)	5
Contacting a potential sponsor for fundraising	3
Securing funds	divide $ amount by 200
Filling out an application on time	3
Chairman's Award Contribution	20
Engineering Inspiration Award Contribution	8
Entrepreneurship Award Contribution	8
Judges’ Award Contribution	5
Safety Animation Award Contribution	10
Team Spirit Award Contribution	5
Woodie Flowers Award Contribution	5

The next step is to implement a way to track these points.  One option was to have a chart with everyone's name on it and paste stickers to show points earned.  While that makes a nice display, it lacks on the reporting aspect.  One of the teachers wanted to be able to use the number of hours spent in robotics as proof for independent study credit.

Since I had acquired some skills with Google spreadsheets while building the inventory tool over the summer (I'll post something at a later date about it), I put together a simple spreadsheet to track these points.  Here's a sample of the Points Tracker.  It's still being tested and then there's a matter of training the team to use it as well...

I will post further on this when there are updates.

Introduction and Recruitment

This is my first real attempt at blogging so please forgive any inadequacies in blog etiquette.

First, an introduction - I am a mentor for the FIRST Robotics Team (FRC) #2601, the Steel Hawks. The team operates out of Townsend Harris High School (THHS) in Flushing, NY.  This is my fourth season as a mentor.  I started out by helping the kids with their robot code in the middle of the 2011 build season for Rebound Rumble. Since my background is in software development, I helped them debug and clean up their Java code for competition. I am also a parent of one of the team members.  We got hooked on robotics when we went to see a competition at Rutgers over 10 years ago.  My brother was a mentor of one of the teams playing - so it's become a family thing.  My brother has since gotten married, had a kid and passed the FRC torch to us.

Last year, we had a change in leadership.  The previous coach who founded the team in 2008 retired and was replaced by a new physics teacher.  We also had a new principal.  With new blood on the team, we were able to make a lot of improvements.  We were able to bag the robot a few days early and complete a second robot for practice.  That was something the team talked about doing but never happened.  We played at 2 regional competitions - historically, we registered only for NYC. The team won the Gracious Professionalism award at NYC. We had drive team tryouts, quiz on the rules, and started to actively fund raise.  We participated in several outreach events and even had some build time over the summer to work on a new drive train.

Fast forward to today - we recognize that we still have a long way to go before we come even close to one of the elite teams.  One of the issues we need to address is that this year, about half of the core team are seniors.  Once these seniors graduate, the team is in danger of losing robotics knowledge. Therefore, members of our student run Executive Board (EB) have been working hard at recruiting and training.

Team recruitment usually begins with a Club Fair in September.  Here, each club in THHS can set up a display and try to sway the freshmen to join.  We had our robot on display and many students signed up.  The next day, we held the first meeting with the prospective Robotics Club members. The classroom was full but that is not unusual.  Many drop out by the time we get to Kick off in January. Students join the Robotics Club before they can qualify to be part of the Robotics team.

The EB has put together a new training program with more emphasis on hands on activities.  Last year, we tried a series of presentations and short videos but people quickly lost interest.  In the first session, the new Robotics Club members got an introduction to FIRST.  They watched one of the matches from Chezy Champs :)  - of course, they didn't really understand the game, the excitement nor could they really appreciate the robots that were playing but I think they got the general idea.

The new members were split into smaller groups and were asked to invent a game to play. As we mentors observed in the back of the room, I noted that there is a remarkable difference between the freshmen and seniors in terms of maturity, how they present themselves, and of course, in height. Some of the shorter kids are just about half the size of the taller ones. It is hard to recall what these seniors looked like in their freshman year.

The new members were asked to vote for a game to play. The winner is called Robo Kart (like Mario Kart).  Once the new members left, the veterans discussed:
1- how the game would need to be tweaked and further details added to make it work
2- how to set up the field and where to put it
3- the next steps in training for the next 2 weeks (4 sessions)

The plan was to have the groups rotate among 8 stations for introductory lessons on Strategy, Design, Control Systems, Programming, Safety, Fundraising, Spirit and Engineering.  These lessons are to help the groups build a robot to play the game.  The aim is to have them experience a condensed robotics cycle.  Another idea that the veterans had is to simulate fundraising where groups would have to go solicit sponsors (aka veteran members) to get "Ishabucks" - named after one of our members.  They need to raise enough Ishabucks to buy parts for their robots.

Observing from the back of the room, fellow mentors and I were able to see that some students were very interested while others were not.  One in particular left early and indicated that he probably wasn't coming back. When asked why, he said that he wanted to build. We tried to explain that this is all preparation for the building.  Some of the veteran members noticed that this person did not fit well in his group.  That led to a discussion whether or not to re-balance the groups to 1- even out the number or people in each group and 2- allow people to move to other groups.

When we discussed the other groups, one issue observed was that people with larger personalities overshadowed those who were more quiet. I suggested that if we had enough veteran members, to have one assigned to each group in order to help bring out the quiet ones.  The veterans were to be more aware and try to keep the quiet ones involved.

We also talked about how to ensure that group members come back in the future sessions.  It wouldn't be fair if some groups lost members.  We can have each group elect a leader.  It would be up to the leader to make sure his/her members all showed up.

Lesson plans are due on Saturday and I'm looking forward to them !